by Faun Rice
tions, and styles loosely classifiable as “art.” In Sepik terms, it was the Abelam’s
superior access to supernatural power that made their long yams larger, their
gardens more productive, and their occupation of land previously the undoubted
property of others so conclusive. (1990: 162–63)
This emphasis on the “superior access to supernatural power,” which under-
writes also the dominant status of major Alur chiefs among peripheral groups of
various ethnicities, will be a recurrent theme in the pages that follow in regard to
the similar reach of even major kingdoms into hinterland realms that they have
neither conquered nor directly rule.
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CORE–PERIPHERY RELATIONS
For all their ethnographic and theoretical obsession with self-determining so-
ciocultural monads, anthropologists have long recognized that societies were
THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF CORE–PERIPHERY RELATIONS 351
never alone and were always interdependent. Long before world-systems theory
made core–periphery relations a critical issue in the human sciences, it was a
common anthropological observation—if not common cultural theory—that
societies were set in regional systems of dominant centers and dependent hin-
terlands, hence adapted to one another in structural form and cultural content.
(I am reminded of something I learned from Althusser: just to recognize a phe-
nomenon is not the same thing as knowing its right theoretical place.) By all
evidence, cultural order has always been regional; or at least since the Neolithic,
it has been marked everywhere by gradients of political-cum-cultural authority
focused on apical centers thereof.
As in the Native Americas, North and South, tribal to imperial, where “one
could not go far in the study of an area,” as Clark Wissler wrote, “before rec-
ognizing that one or more tribes dominate” (1938: 261). Along with Alfred
Kroeber, Wissler was a key figure in the development of the largely forgotten
and little-lamented culture area studies of the early twentieth century. Although
their primary interest was in the reconstruction of history from the distribu-
tion of “culture traits,” both Wissler and Kroeber were thereby led to recog-
nize the core–periphery relations in play among the societies of a given region.
Conscious of their power, the dominant tribes of the area, Wissler wrote, were
“centers of influence” (ibid.). For his part, Kroeber, in the Cultural and natural
areas of Native North America (1947: 5), endorsed Wissler’s contention that the
dominant center was “the integral thing about the area.” The center was a “cul-
tural climax,” whence radiated the forms and practices that united and distin-
guished the societies of the region. Both Kroeber and Wissler also recognized
certain dynamic features that only many decades later were comprehended as
recurrent and systemic properties of these multicultural configurations: that the
centers rise and fall, competitively expanding and contracting, to the extent that
erstwhile peripheral societies often become focal, even as the thresholds of the
culture area prove unstable—which is also to say that important political forces
are in play at the peripheries as well as the core of the system (cf. Helms 1993:
187f.). Wissler made the point particularly in discussing the rise of the Teton
Dakota and Cheyenne from marginal positions to dominance in the Great
Plains during the nineteenth century. “They formed a focus for a central cluster
of tribes whose influence is seen throughout the area and its corresponding re-
gional development” (1938: 261). Nor, then, was such domination characteristic
only of the greater American civilizations such as the Inka, Maya, or Mexica:
“We have found the higher centers of culture in Mexico and Peru to be not
352
ON KINGS
really unique growths but to possess many of the fundamental traits common to
the wilder folks in the marginal areas of both continents” (ibid.: 383).
The decades following World War II saw several increasingly sophisticat-
ed—though apparently unrelated—anthropologies of cultural order radiating
outward from dominant centers on a regional or world scale, the latest of these
in dialogue with modern globalization paradigms. Beside Southall on segmen-
tary states, there was Kroeber (1945) on the Old World oikoumene of intercon-
nected “high civilizations” developing from around 1000 bc from the Straits of
Gibraltar to Java, each with their culturally dependent hinterlands. In a related
discussion in his encyclopedic textbook Anthropology (1948), Kroeber noted the
“reduction” of culture as it spread from the more developed regions: “the ba-
sic idea” being that “culture gradually radiates from creative focal centers to
backward marginal areas, without the original dependence of the peripheries
precluding their subsequent independent development.” And in the latter con-
nection, he drew attention again to the instability of these regional hierarchies,
noting that the high centers may shift as new ones emerge, even at the edges,
“until what was peripheral has become focal” (ibid.: 701–2).
Then there was Morton Fried’s (1967, 1975) critique of anthropological no-
tions of the “tribe” as a self-determined indigenous form, contending rather
that all tribes ancient and recent were created by colonial impulses of already-
existing states (in contemporary terms, a “state-effect”); even as most states were
likewise secondary formations, constituted directly or indirectly by influences
emanating from the pristine few that had evolved independently. Supposing
this derivation of secondary states from the original ones, together with the
derivation of tribes from existing states, the world according to Fried would
again consist of multicultural constellations of core–periphery form.
Speaking of intercultural relations, in the middle Sepik region of New Guinea,
Deborah Gewertz was hardly the only anthropologist to find a “world-system”
among “tribal” societies in the wake of Immanuel Wallerstein’s celebrated analy-
sis of the modern capitalist world-system in the 1970s. Some were put in mind
of the earlier culture area discussions (e.g., Kowalewski 1996), yet even those who
rejected the comparison described regional configurations of “stateless” societies
in much the same terms. Barry Craig and George E. B. Morren, Jr. preferred to
speak of “culture spheres” in their survey of the several regional systems of Low-
land and Highland New Guinea, but in a way quite reminiscent of Wisslerian
culture areas: “A sphere is a political y expansive, segmentary, reticulated mosaic
of local groups that, notwithstanding observable ethnolinguistic diversity, share a
THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF CORE–PERIPHERY RELATIONS 353
common tradition and are strongly influenced by one or more core populations
at the historic-geographic center(s) of their region” (1990: 10). In such terms, the
authors describe the Mountain Ok sphere, whose ritually sustained core–periph-
ery relations were a subject of interest in chapter 1 above. In an extensive study
of relations betwee
n the Wintu and neighboring peoples of the aboriginal Cali-
fornia region, Christopher Chase-Dunn and Kel y M. Mann (1998) also reject
the analogy to classic culture areas, although taken in larger compass what they
describe is an even greater multicultural order centered in the Pomo and Patwin
peoples. Nor would it be altogether an oxymoron to speak of such regional hier-
archies as “world-systems,” inasmuch as for the peoples concerned they are the
human world. The centers from which cultural influences spread were typical y
superior to the outlying societies in wealth, population, ritual powers, ceremonial
pageantry, artistic and architectural achievements, and military prowess—and
would be so acknowledged by the hinterland peoples. But when it comes to the
economic exploitation of the peripheral societies by dominant ones, or the mate-
rial dependency of the former on the latter in the manner of a global industrial
order, here the resemblances end. Introducing a collection of papers on world-
systems theory and archaeology, Peter Peregrine (1996: 3–4) writes:
What all these redefinitions of core/periphery relations seem to have in common
is the notion that world systems did exist in prehistoric, pre-capitalist situations,
but that Wallerstein’s definitions of core/periphery relations are too strict to be
directly applied to them. . . . Most of the scholars have argued in one way or
another that dependency or exploitation is a basic characteristic of the capitalist
world system but may not have been for pre-capitalist world systems. Models
of core/periphery relations in the absence of this dependency open the world
system perspective to a variety of pre-capitalist and non-capitalist situations . . . .
The ethnographic argument—as in the Sepik and Mountain Ok regions—
would be that the cultural attainments of the dominant peoples function as
demonstration-effects of their superior relations to the metaperson powers of
human welfare. Hence the movement of rituals and other cultural forms of
cosmological import from the center to outlying peoples, including even gods,
ancestors, clans, and totems.
In another critical reflex of world-systems theory, Kajsa Ekholm, Jonathan
Friedman, and colleagues have argued in a series of ambitious works that a po-
litical economy of planetary—or at least hemispheric—dimensions has been in
354
ON KINGS
existence since its origins in the Mesopotamian civilizations of five thousand years
ago (J. Friedman and Rowlands 1978; Ekholm and Friedman 1979; Ekholm
1980; J. Friedman 1992; K. E. Friedman and J. Friedman 2008). There may have
been some other original civilizations, as in China, but they were integrated into
a single historically connected global network of regional polities—the modern
European-based world-system included, having been a late relay from the Mid-
dle East. Although Friedman has explicitly argued against the explanation of
particular cultural formations as such by their mode of production, his analysis
of core–periphery relations reproduces classical utilitarian arguments—in fact,
the lineaments of the modern world-system of industrial capital—at this inter-
cultural level. The dominant regional centers are manufacturing hubs exploiting
peripheral societies organized as specialized suppliers of raw materials: until a
surfeit of capital wealth at the center causes a production crisis, a rise in the
price of raw materials, the flight of capital to outside societies, followed by the
collapse of the core and its replacement often by one or another external group.
Without subscribing to Friedman’s economics of core–periphery relations, we
should retain the observation of their unstable, competitive character, especially
the challenges to the center from the margins—a process typically preceded and
made possible by a soft-power assimilation of the margins to the center.
Of the several extant anthropologies of core–periphery relations, the one I
believe best serves as a general model is the “galactic polity” as formulated by
Stanley Tambiah in the late1970s and early 1980s—and complemented by Mary
Helms’ discussions of the like (Tambiah 1976, 1985, 1987; Helms 1988, 1993).3
Tambiah coined the term in reference to premodern Southeast Asian civiliza-
tions such as Sukhotai, Ayutthaya, Angkor Wat, Pagan, Srivijaya, and Madjapa-
hit; but as we already know, similar constellations of apical centers reproducing
themselves in diminishing versions as they spread into underdeveloped hinter-
lands have been ubiquitous modes of intercultural order from the beginnings
of recorded history and anthropology. Unlike the Ekholm–Friedman economic
model, however, the galactic polity was for Tambiah a cosmopolitical order:
cosmology and polity being two modalities of the same fundamental structure
(see chapters 3 and 4). Just as in the classic mandala system of the universe,
the states ruled by Buddhist ( chakkavatin) and Hindu ( devaraja) kings of kings
3. The following paragraphs reprise the discussion of galactic polities elsewhere in this
volume, sometimes in the same terms. Aside from the fact that the chapters at issue
were written on different occasions, I can offer little excuse for the repetition except
that it is indispensable for what follows here.
THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF CORE–PERIPHERY RELATIONS 355
realized in another register the creative force and moral virtue radiating with
progressively declining effect from an original, refined center to the gross beings
of the world’s outer reaches:
We are told that the wheel-rolling emperor solemnly invokes the wheel to roll
outward; the wheel roles successively toward the East, the South, the North,
and the West. As the mighty monarch with his fourfold army appeared in each
quarter following the wheel, the rival kings prostrated themselves in submission.
The cakkavati allowed them to retain their possessions on condition of their
obedience of the five moral principles binding on Buddhist laymen. (Tambiah
1976: 45–46)
Tambiah makes the important observation that the galactic polity was “cen-
tered” rather than “centralized,” inasmuch as the authority of the sovereign, al-
though in principle extending indefinitely through the world in all directions, in
practice was limited to the governance of the capital and surrounding provinces,
beyond which were self-governing, tributary-paying principalities; and beyond
these, an untamed zone at best linked to the core by raid and trade. While it is
often noticed that the cosmocratic reach of galactic kings exceeds their admin-
istrative grasp, we should not forget that the repute of their divinely endowed
potency does indeed extend beyond their ability to enforce it—thereby creat-
ing a far-reaching cultural subordination among hinterland peoples without the
benefit of real-political coercion.
Soft power thus begins at the cosmic center, which in these Southeast Asian
kingdoms was the center of the world, an axis mundi running through the royal
palace and the nearby temples of the dominant kingdom cults. In many of the
major realms, this central establishment was identified with the
famous cosmic
mountain of the Indian tradition, Mt. Meru, through which were transmitted
the divine powers that enabled the sacred ruler to “conquer” in all directions.
Here also were housed the regalia and palladia of rule: statues of the Buddha,
linga of Shiva, famous krises, sacred jewels, and other royal heirlooms whose
subjective powers of sovereignty were as much objectified in the kingship as
the kingship was objectified in them—the moi subtil of the king, as some an-
cient texts have it (Coedès 1968: 101).4 Or else, as in the case of the Emerald
4. The founder of the Angkor empire, Jayavarman II, is said to have doubled down
by installing a linga originally obtained from Shiva in a sanctuary atop a natural or
artificial mountain at the center of the royal city.
356
ON KINGS
This map was originally created for Sheldon Pollock’s The Language of the Gods in the
World of Men (2009) and is reproduced here with some modification with permission.
THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF CORE–PERIPHERY RELATIONS 357
Buddha, the Sinhala Buddha, and other historic palladia of Thai kingship, the
statue was “animated” by the “presence” of the Buddha himself, whence radiated
a “fiery energy” that blessed and fecundated the world (Tambiah 1984: 204ff.).
Tambiah meticulously documents the process by which the images are linked
by a series of “reincarnations” to the Buddha himself, then consecrated in rituals
that render him immanent in the statue, as by recitations that inject his biogra-
phy into it, culminating in ceremonies for opening the statue’s eyes. Prominent
among the other fructifying effects that could now be spread abroad by the
Buddha’s fiery energy was rain. The pervasive animism of the outlying hill tribes
of Southeast Asia thus had its counterpart in what might be called the “po-
litical animism” of the civilized centers (cf. Århem and Sprenger 2016). Apart
from the dynastic heroes, Indic gods, or the Buddha who might be enshrined in
such sovereign objects, giving them agentive powers of prosperity and protective
force, some might have come from the hinterlands—like the amulets of Thai
forest monks, which, as Tambiah also documented, conveyed potencies of the
wild to the kingdom’s civilized centers.5
